As for today’s (yesterday’s really) question, I’m still thinking. My initial response was, “I want more points!”

Did I choose my trials? I don’t know. But I think I was prepared for them, maybe without knowing what they were, which is a very different thing. You can prepare for something without knowing exactly what will happen in the moment it does. Right now, though, I see through a glass darkly: I’m never quite sure, when in a trial, the source of any extra strength–is it from premortal preparation? Or just lots of current prayers on my behalf? Or the angels I imagine around me? Or a combination of them all, and something else? One of the things I am most looking forward to about eternity is seeing how all these pieces fit together.

Genesis 50:20
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (e.g. earthly evil and pain can be transformed to work for our good in the end — that’s the point of the atonement, right?)

From The Bluest Eye
“There is really nothing more to say- except why. But since why is difficult to handle one must take refuge in how.”

I’m sure God makes many decisions about our families and trials without having consulted us in premortality, and I’m sure he let us make some of our own premortal choices without full knowledge of all the implications, just as we do in mortality. On the other hand, I’m sure these things are sometimes simply determined by the random chance that I believe God allows to operate to a degree in human affairs. Besides, maybe you affiliated yourself in premortality with your future earthly family before there was any indication of the earthly trials that awaited them (and thus you). Or maybe you didn’t—at this point, only God knows.

In other words, I’m sure the circumstances and events of our lives arise from a mixture of premortal and mortal self-determination, God’s will, and mortal chance. Each person undoubtedly is affected by a different proportion of those three forces; it will be interesting to see the full picture in the afterlife.

With two mentally ill parents – one of whom committed suicide when I was a teenager – I am certain that I did not choose my family or my trials. If I had any real understanding of what my trials would have been like, I would not have chosen them. But I believe that God chose them for me. He has a much better understanding of what I could bear and what I could become despite those trials. In premortality, we would not have had God’s omniscience and it seems like that would be an important skill in putting people into family groups and assigning trials. We wouldn’t have had the foresight to get all of that right.